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Psycho (1946)

posted a month ago by roger1 (2394)
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A little experiment here:

I've mused -- by myself and with some other posters here -- about the fact that though Psycho in 1960 was a "modern movie" that went groundbreaking places and heralded "a new age in movies"(both in the 60's to immediately come but pretty much on through the horror movies and slashers of the 70's and 80s) BUT...at the same time...wasn't all that many years after such traditional 1940's "thrillers" as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and The Big Sleep.

Using the most "recent" of those -- The Big Sleep from 1946 -- I am now taking an extra step:

What if the story of Psycho was MADE AS A MOVIE in 1946?

One big leap has to be made: Robert Bloch wrote the novel Psycho in 1959 so we'd have to move that novel's appearance back to ...1945. OK. Done.

So now you are the heads of an American studio in 1945 -- Universal (where Psycho was shot) existed but let's go with the releasing studio -- Paramount -- which was much more prestigious than Universal in 1945 -- and let's greenlight Psycho as a 1946 release and...let's try to imagine that movie.

Hey...its actually kind of IMPOSSIBLE isn't it? The content of Psycho -- so shocking and horrific(and perverse, and sexual) in 1960 -- so "tame" now(only TWO murders in a near-two-hour film?) was simply not do-able that way in 1946 so all that would have survived in a 1960 version of Psycho would be a "toothless bare bones" version of the story. With the graphic murders pretty much totally removed -- I'm not sure in 1946 if you could even go so far as to show Mother pulling open the shower curtain on a censored naked Marion.

And yet: take a look at "Detour" sometime. Its a 1945 movie that begins in the Arizona desert(on a highway) and ends in California at a motel. With an accidental killing. The movie was very low budget, filmed in only a few days and...pretty damn tawdry for its time. A definite precursor to Psycho if only in the FEEL of that long Arizona highway leading to a shabby California motel. (A noirish man and an absolute horrendous harridan of a pretty woman end up there, with a "Cassidy" like well-off guy along for the ride at one point.)

Anyway, with "Detour" and (in a different way) "The Big Sleep" as templates and -- for a specific reason -- Double Indemnity thrown in. I'm going to play the game.

First, casting:

Norman Bates: Robert Walker.

As a matter of "Hitchcock history," Hitch seems to have cast two young men "against type as villains" for pretty much the same reason, about a decade apart: Robert Walker(a young ingenue of the 40s, boyish) as Bruno in Strangers on a Train, Anthony Perkins(a young ingenue of the 50s, boyish) as Norman in Psycho.

I have mused that in a "time warp," Anthony Perkins could have played Bruno and Robert Walker could have played Norman. Frankly, Perkins as Bruno I can see more fittingly: put Perkins in a nice suit, he would give us HIS Bruno -- though alas, Bruno is clearly the villain from the start, a cruel, sadistic and petulant guy, no sympathy at all. Perkins might well have been "wasted" as Bruno given how perfect he was for the much more sympathetic and involving Norman.

But its 1946, Robert Walker is so boyish he almost looks like a teen(he had "filled out" at age 32 in Strangers) and...I'll give him Norman under these circumstances. Some of the fey, gay way Walker talks on the train to Farley Granger COULD transfer to Norman's parlor chat with Marion, circa 1946.

Marion Crane: Lana Turner.

When Hitchcock and screenwriter Joe Stefano were looking to cast Psycho in 1959, evidently the name of Lana Turner came up. Turner had just had a comeback with the movies "Peyton Place" and "Imitation of Life" and was hot again at an older age. I've not seen "Imitation of Life," but I believe that John Gavin actually played Turner's love interest(or was he Sandra Dee's?) Plus Turner had scandalous knife murder in her recent past: her daughter had stabbed Turner's boyfriend, gangster Johnny Stompanato, in the stomach defending her mother, and killed him. (Turner and Stompanato figure in the great 1997 LA noir, LA Confidential, set in 1953 before the murder.

It would seem that Hitchcock rejected Lana Turner for Psycho in 1959 -- I'll guess -- because she was just too old for the part. Marion is GETTING a bit old for a single woman(Leigh was 32) but Turner was starting to look downright matronly. I'll also guess that maybe on the basis of Peyton Place and Imitation of Life, Turner wasn't quite classy enough in choice of material for Hitch.

Well, back up to 1946: Lana Turner was young, blonde, HOT and (in real life) playing the seductive female lead in The Postman Always Rings Twice(opposite John Garfield) from a James Cain novel and ALSO about life on the American highway -- here with a roadside diner rather than a roadside motel.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

So let's give Lana Turner the lead in Psycho -- properly cast younger in 1946 -- that she couldn't get in 1959. "And Lana Turner as Marion Crane."

Arbogast: Edward G. Robinson.

I'm cheating here a bit. I'm pretty sure that I read sometime, somewhere that Martin Balsam's Arbogast of 1960 was "in the Edward G. Robinson tradition." Balsam and Robinson WERE rather similar: short, stocky, swarthy faces, compelling manner. Balsam was arguably more handsome than Robinson, but that depends, too.

Robinson had "Arbogast roles"(without getting killed either time) in two 40's classics: The first was"Double Indemnity" (1944) for Billy Wilder, where he slowly but surely investigates an "accidental death" as an insurance claims investigator(Arbogast in Bloch's book WAS an insurance investigator, too...but in the field) and learns, to his tragic sadness, that one of the killers is his best friend(Fred MacMurray.)

The other was "The Stranger" -- one of those very few American films directed by Orson Welles(with Welles himself as the lead villain.) Here we have one of the earliest versions of a type who came back a lot in movies of the seventies like "Marathon Man" and "The Boys From Brazil" -- "the postwar Nazi hunter." This is a 1946 film, too! Its been said that Orson Welles -- young and handsome in the 40's -- COULD have played Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, and he's kind of playing him here(recall that Welles'Citizen Kane co-star Joseph Cotten played Charlie for real.) Anyway, ex-Nazi Welles(in a new non-Nazi identity) has married Loretta Young and settled into small town East Coast college professor life -- but Nazi hunter Eddie G turns up on his trail(Arbogast-like). Welles murders another man who knows his identity but doesn't manage to kill Eddie G before he dies hjimself(in a nice Hitchcockian death -- stabbed by the sword in the hand of a statue man in a clock bell tower!)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

Yep, Double Indemnity and The Stranger give us "how Edward G. Robinson would have played Arbogast" and it would have been fun to see him in the role. (Alas, Robinson was simply too old to play Arbogast in 1960.) But this: in 1946, Robinson was a pretty big star. He might have required billing OVER Robert Walker as Norman. And Robinson would truly be ANOTHER "big star getting killed early" in Psycho.

Sam Loomis: John Hodiak.

Searching my mind for a 1946 John Gavin, I instinctively jumped to an actual Hitchcock actor of the 40s: John Hodiak. I think I leaped there for several reasons. The Hitchcock movie was Lifeboat(1944). Hodiak wasn't all that big a star when he landed that lead. I think Hitchcock wanted Henry Fonda(its the only movie Hitch made at Fox and Fonda was on contract there.) So Hodiak's lack of stardom made him close to John Gavin. But also my mind leaped to the fact that Hodiak played much of Lifeboat -- with his shirt OFF, ala John Gavin in the famous opening scene of Psycho. Funny thing: though beefcake torso requirements weren't at Arnold/Sly levels in 1960, Gavin's upper torso was certainly better developed for Psycho than Hodiak's in Lifeboat -- male muscle work out regimens must have changed , decade by decade.

I think John Hodiak was a handsome man with charisma. He sometimes acted with a moustache, but he didn't in Lifeboat and he shouldn't in 1946's Psycho. True sad fact: Hodiak died young, at only age 41, of a sudden heart attack. Perhaps more prevalent back then, it is nonetheless shocking to realize that some folks simply weren't born with the hearts to live to old age.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

Lila Crane: Priscilla Lane.

Heh. This part was hard to cast in my mind. June Allyson first sprang to mind -- she played " nice girls with spunk" and was the proper youthful age to play this part in 1946. (She had the "good girl" role -- to Lana Turner's bad girl role -- in The Three Musketeers" in 1948.)

As a back-up, I put Priscilla Lane in as Lila. She TOO was a Hitchocck veteran(Saboteur) and, as with John Hodiak in Lifeboat was a "second tier star" (Hitchcock had wanted Barbra Stanwyck as his Saboteur lead.) The truth of the matter is that Lila in 1946 didn't merit a major female star any more than in 1960. Stanwyck or Ingrid Bergman weren't going to play Lila.

I think Priscilla Lane was feisty enough in Saboteur to "fit" Lila and -- here's the thing -- I just think/thought that Lane had a helluva pretty face. I'm talking bigtime crush here. (When she more than flirtatiously "comes on" to Norman Lloyd at the end in Lady Liberty, the crush expanded towards lust. ) I'm not sure why major stardom eluded Lane but I know she landed at least one bigger, more "A list" movie than Saboteur: Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace -- with A-list Cary Grant as her leading man. (Doesn't Arsenic and Old Lace SEEM like Hitchcock, and not Capra, should have directed it? Maybe not...too broad and farcical.)

Anyway, in my little scenario here, I'm giving Lila to Priscilla Lane. I think Vera Miles as Lila was a PRETTY actress(in a bland person role), I think the pretty Priscilla Lane would be more involving to watch as Lila than my first choice of June Allyson.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

So there's my cast for Psycho (1946) -- the "Big Five"

Norman: Robert Walker
Marion: Lana Turner
Arbogast: Edward G. Robinson
Sam: John Hodiak
Lila: Priscilla Lane(or June Allyson)

As for the clutch of supporting players in Psycho -- mainly men but a couple of distinctive women --, well, we have the entire great big group of contract and non-contract studio talent. Our resident expert in such matters, telegonus, might have some good ideas here.

I'll offer a few suggestions: how about Charles Lane for Lowery the real estate man? How about Frank Ferguson for Cassidy, the oil man? But...I'm not sure who from 1946 to cast as California Charlie, or Deputy Sheriff Chambers, or Dr. Richman the psychiatrist at the end (and psychiatry was "hot" in 1946 given the success of movies like Spellbound in 1945.)

This: The "casting game' for my 1946 Psycho -- whether you agree with my choices or have better ones -- is rather the "easy part" of trying to imagine a 1946 Psycho.

The much harder part of imagining a 1946 Psycho is trying to imagine it being made then at ALL.

For even if Psycho is comparatively tame and non-violent TODAY, it really needed the arrival of 1960 and the imminent sixties to ALLOW much of what it got in THEN.

Another 1960 film demonstrates this issue very well:

Billy Wilder made his classic Best Picture winner Psycho for 1960 release, too...it came out the same summer AS Psycho, and the two were foreever linked.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

The Apartment lacked the violence of Psycho, but it had a good healthy dose of sex. Billy Wilder told his original choice for the Fred MacMurray part -- Paul Douglas (who died of a heart attack right before the movie was to be shot)-- "this is a movie about 'f-ing." And it IS. Wall to wall, start to finish, without the dirty deed ever being shown at all. Heck, none of the women in The Apartment ever strip down to what Janet Leigh did in Psycho..though Shirley MacLaine wears a slip at one point, as I recall.

Anyway: the key thing. Billy Wilder said he got the idea for The Apartment in ..1945! When he saw the British romance Brief Encounter...about a couple who used the bed of a male friend for their adultery(all implied, I guess -- I never saw the film) and this left Wilder thinking about "the poor guy who had to get into a bed with the sheets warm from the lovers who had been there."

But: the key KEY thing: Wilder developed his ideas for "The Apartment" in the forties and the fifties but felt he had to WAIT...to wait for what he considered to be an inevitable future development: movie censorship abating enough that he could slip the plot of "The Apartment"(a movie about f-ing) PAST obliging censors.

Wilder decided that "the sixties" would be the right time(the fifties had been breaking their own barriers.)

And whaddya know, HItchocck must have felt the same way about Psycho too - it was TIME to make a change. (Anthony Perkins aid part of his decision to agree to play Mad Norman was: "Am I ready to enter the sixties?"

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

One more step for Billy Wilder: in 1960, he made The Apartment. In 1964, he made "Kiss Me Stupid" -- en even more lurid film (with big stars Dean Martin and Kim Novak)...and couldn't get a major studio to distribute it. Still, Wilder said this to co-star Ray Walston: "You watch, in a few years, movie censorship will practically disappear and the movies will become more adult." He was right of course.

But not back in 1946 where I'm having this Psycho made. (And yeah, Hitchcock can be the director in 1946, but I doubt he would have felt as compelled to be so.)

Movies of the 1940s as we have them suggest that within deep Hays Code bounds, directors could still get away with a lot. Like Hitchcock. In Lifeboat, Tallulah Bankhead and shirtless John Hodiak play a lot of carnal verbal scenes, with some heavy kissing -- I figure the two characters managed to have sex while everyone else slept. And Bergman is a "tramp" whose sexual conquests are many in Notorious. And Rope opens with a pretty cruel and ghastly strangling(only the last moments) committed by two likely gay men(unmentionable in 1948).

More on point, for violence: in Hitchcock's 1940 "Foreign Correspondent," a diplomat climbs an outdoor stone staircase and is shot in the face at the top(by a "photographer" with a gun alongside his camera.) Blood fills the victim's face and he tumbles backwards down the stone staircase. Its the Arbogast murder 20 years early!
And probably shocking enough in 1940 but this: the shot of the bloodied face of the victim is held for mere milliseconds, you barely get to see it -- you would see 1960 Arbogast's bloodied face for the long time of his long fall. Also in Foreign Correspondent, the fall down the staircase is a long shot with a stunt man. Also in Foriegn Correspondent, there is no screeching shock music to make you scream during the murder.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

Still the elements of the "Arbogast murder" of 1960 on screen are there - shorter, more truncated -- in Foreign Correspondent and MAYBE the Arbogast murder COULD have passed the 1946 censors if handled that way: quick, no linger close-up on the bloodied face, a stuntman falling down some stairs at a distance, none of the detail of Mother leaping upon him, etc.

Or more likely -- as I've opined before about a censored version of Psycho in any pre-1960 version: cut the murders entirely. End the shower scene on Mother pulling open the curtain. FADE OUT. End the staircase murder on the shot of the door opening and the shadow on the carpet. FADE OUT. I'm guessing that in 1946, the staircase murder could be handled that way, but I still think the shower murder(and Mother holding the big KNIFE) might have to be fully censored. Just have Norman run in and look down into the shower area "after the fact" maybe?

There are movies from Val Lewton ("Cat People") that had spooky lighting and light jump scares and shadows (didn't Cat People have a woman menaced whlie swimming in a pool at night?) that suggest how Psycho 1946 might play its scares. "Mood" versus what Pauline Kael called "Blast in the face Psycho violence.")

By the way, there is a movie of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" circa 1945 from which, it is said, Hitchocck "borrowed"(stole?) the effect for his Psycho fruit cellar climax where the lightbulb swings back and forth and plunges the room into alternating dark and light. And the "old Dorian Gray" face in the painting in THAT movie is pretty gruesome looking indeed -- Mrs. Bates in the cellar.

But wait: Hitchcock fired the first screenwriter of Psycho -- a man named James Cavenaugh -- for pulling his punches on Psycho, such as revealing Mrs. Bates fruit cellar face as "a huge doll head with buttons for eyes."
Well, perhaps that's what a 1946 Psycho could do too -- "doll face with button eyes Mrs. Bates."

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

I must say that this 1946 version of Psycho just refuses to take shape as a "real movie" to me, though I can certainly SEE it in my mind -- the film stock of 1946, the "square" screen ratio, the 1946 actors, and -- alas -- a rather continual "pulling of the punches" whereever Psycho 1960 dared to go: could we see Lana Turner and John Hodiak necking in their underwear? Turner in underwear on other occasions? Turner entering a shower? Turner flushing a toilet? Music with the screeching power of Herrmann's murder music? Graphic murders? The long and graphic clean-up of the murder and burial of Marion's body?

I expect that the BIG "no no" of a 1946 Psycho would be in the psychiatrist's explanation at the end. Oh, Hitchocck had psychiatrists say a LOT of things in 1945's Spellbound, but methinks the "Psycho shrink of 1946" would have to drop the stuff about stuffing a corpse and keeping it around the house. What could be said INSTEAD? That Mother died and Norman simply never buried her? (Perhaps some of the gruesome backstory of the "Frankenstein monster" of 1931 would allow for talk of "the dead among the living" here?) WAS a 1946 movie character allowed to kill their own mother?

One slight thing in FAVOR of a 1946 Psycho. It has been said that Hitchcock "used radio show techniques" for the scenes of Marion imagining various voices in her head on her drive up California. The voices of Sam and Lowery and Caroline and Cassidy have a "radio feeling" to them so these scenes likely could have been done quite well in 1946.

Well...experiment concluded. I CAN see SOME version of Psycho being produced and released in 1946, but so gutted of any sexual and violence and horror content as to end up being somewhere between Detour and Cat People in look and feel. (With Edward G. Robinson's Arbogast perhaps giving the movie some noir.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

But the REALITY is that - as Billy Wilder stated with The Apartment -- the American movie studio system had to slowly yield to the reality of American (and world) life getting more and more sophisticated and less and less repressed before the "perfect moment" arrived for Psycho to enter the culture and the world.

And that was in 1960. Not in 1946.

[–] Doghouse (447) a month ago

Hi, Roger. Back again with a few random thoughts (as are most of mine these days).

I like your casting choices, but have a couple alternatives to propose. Robinson would be good (he always was), but I wonder if his star-power gravitas might have been a bit overwhelming, throwing Arbogast's section of the story out of balance.

Lloyd Nolan had played his share of investigators, both private and on the public payroll, and an affable manner combined with a subtle undercurrent of insinuation was the sort that would draw out someone he was questioning, inducing them to offer just a bit more information than they might otherwise to allay any perceived suspicions. A number of other roles as hoods had furnished him with sufficient "tough guy" screen cred.

I do like Hodiak as Sam, although his screen persona seemed to lean more in the direction of urban smoothie. Come to that, Gavin himself looked more like he belonged in a lawyer's office than a hardware store. How 'bout our Detour protagonist, Tom Neal? Young and physically robust enough to have been Marion's object of lust as well as Lila's last-minute save-the-day hero, he was also good at the beaten-down quality of a man with possibilities now mired in circumstances that had stalled his momentum.

My only reservation about Lane as Lowery is an inherently comic persona of the unsympathetic variety. Chronically dour, his nasal monotone had, by the mid-'40s, begun to take up the slack from Ned Sparks, whose film career was only a couple of pictures from its end. In his place, I imagine Porter Hall (the train witness, Jackson, in Double Indemnity), who was physically not unlike Vaughn Taylor: slight; balding; mustached. Nervous and concerned businessmen were among the many guises he could furnish as easily as pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.

CONT

[–] Doghouse (447) a month ago

Here are my ideas on the "uncast" roles. I'd incorporate some irony into the casting of California Charlie: quintessential New Yawk fast-talker, Sam Levene. The avuncularity he displayed in Crossfire and Sweet Smell of Success was every bit as ingratiating as John Anderson's comfortingly rustic version. As Lt. Abrams in two Thin Man movies, he could convey suspicion with nothing more than a narrowed eye. And as gentlemanly con-man Horsethief in The Big Street, swindle-with-a-smile was a specialty.

As Sheriff Chambers, I envision Harry Shannon, who played more cops of varying types than you could shake a nightstick at: straight-arrow, big-city smart cookies; corrupt rubber-hose-wielders; rural deputies; kindly, small-town beat-walkers; befuddled blusterers.

Shadow of a Doubt's Patricia Collinge would have fit well as Mrs. Chambers. But a passing thought: with the right makeup, hair and properly dowdy costuming, Lurene Tuttle might have pulled it off just as easily in '46 as she did 14 years later. In fact, now I think of it, so could John McIntire have done.

For Dr. Richman, any number of authoritative types would do (with the professorial, Viennese-accented stereotype to be avoided at all costs), but there was an endlessly versatile, prolific but unsung character actor of the era named Stanley Ridges. From rigid military officers to studious chemists, understanding judges or underworld hoods, lawyers sincere or sleazy, doctors of all types and temperaments (including psychiatrists), he unerringly filled the bill wherever he was cast, and could dominate or downplay as the scenes required.

Who does that leave: Caroline? Maybe Jeff Donnell (she played Frank Lovejoy's wife in In a Lonely Place, and Tony Curtis's frumpy secretary in Sweet Smell of Success). But anyone who'd look just ordinary enough next to Lana Turner would do (leaving a wide field).

As you say, that's the easy part. If my thoughts on the rest jell, I'll chime in again.

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

Hi, Roger.

Hi, Doghouse!

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Back again with a few random thoughts (as are most of mine these days).

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But always welcome!

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I like your casting choices, but have a couple alternatives to propose.

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I was hoping others would be offered. I can't say that I was "rock solid sure" about MINE. I mean technically a 1946 Hitchcock out to make Psycho would consult with his studio casting agencies and have SCORES of choices to cast.

I think I did my casting first looking at Hitchcock's OWN 40s actors got in, which is how John Hodiak and Priscilla Lane got in. I flashed on Hodiak going shirtless in Lifeboat(ala John Gavin) and how Priscilla Lane was "not quite starry enough" for Saboteur and thus they seemed like solid "B-list choices" -- rather as John Gavin and Vera Miles were at the time. Though I'd say that Gavin and Miles were more like "A list wannabees."

Casting Norman seems a fool's errand. Norman Bates IS Anthony Perkins for all time now, and despite several attempts by others to play the role(Henry Thomas, Vince Vaughn and close-but-no cigar Freddie Highmore.) So I went back to "Hitchcock lore": Hitchcock cast Robert Walker as Bruno for the same reason he cast Perkins as Norman: against type ingenue good guys "who always seemed a little strange anyway." I can EASILY see Perkins as Bruno(in a suit and tie) seeing Walker as Norman is harder...but it can be done.

Marion could have been any American blonde actress, I suppose, but I gave the role to Lana Turner because she really had a shot for the 1959 version. Turner was 38 in 1959 when Psycho was filmed for real..not THAT old, but a bit matronly. Turner was 25 in 1946...perhaps a bit too YOUNG to play "over the hill" Marion but...eh, why not?

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

..which brings me to: Edward G. Robinson as Arbogast and to doghouse:

Robinson would be good (he always was), but I wonder if his star-power gravitas might have been a bit overwhelming, throwing Arbogast's section of the story out of balance.

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Yes, that occured to me too. (Or as Norman says to Marion and putting Ma away..."Yes, I've thought of thta myself.")

Robinson wasn't a supporting player character guy -- at least not for long. I'd say he was a STAR, a character star(like Gene Hackman, George C. Scott and Walter Matthau) later on and would indeed throw off the balance of the movie. And yet...what a fun idea to SEE him in it..and to hear his voice saying "To tell you the truth, I DO mind. If it doesn't jell, it isn't aspic, and...something's not jellin.' Its not coming together. Something's missing." Eddie G. could SELL that, just as when he talks of "the little man in my stomach" who bothers his investigation in Double Indemnity.

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Lloyd Nolan had played his share of investigators, both private and on the public payroll, and an affable manner combined with a subtle undercurrent of insinuation was the sort that would draw out someone he was questioning, inducing them to offer just a bit more information than they might otherwise to allay any perceived suspicions. A number of other roles as hoods had furnished him with sufficient "tough guy" screen cred.

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A fine choice for 1946 and appropriately "character guy." You know that I think Hitchcock's Arbogast is rather rare in screen history: a supporting player in a lead role -- if only for 20 minutes. Barely a production photo of Martin Balsam was taken for Psycho, whereas Perkins, Leigh, Miles and Gavin appeared in 10 or more apiece. In short, the studio didn't count Martin Balsam as a star - even though the damn role PLAYS like one(but it didn't MAKE him a star, it just made him an in-demand character guy.)

So Eddie G is WRONG for Arbogast, but he's RIGHT, too.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

When Gus Van Sant first pitched Psycho to Universal -- years before the one he made -- he threw out two names for casting: Timothy Hutton for Norman(rather perfect; he'd been called "the new Tony Perkins") and...Jack Nicholson for Arbogast! Now of course Nicholson would have made a great Arbogast but...too big a star, too expensive, and maybe not interested in getting killed so bloody.

Still: Robinson as Arbogast is rather like Nicholson as Arbogast and, hey back to 1960: what if Hitch cast Arbogast with a big star, too? How about Sinatra(he was slightly balding too.) No, impossible. Psycho was a fairly low budget film and Hitchcock decided to cast Arbogast as support.

One last thing on Martin Balsam versus Eddie G, Lloyd Nolan...and William H. Macy, who did the remake.

I'll always wonder what kind of 'artist's eye" Hitchocck had to PICTURE how Martin Balsam would look in his murder victim close up -- ROUND head, ROUND face, ROUND open mouth, eyes, and nostrils. And the baldness (ROUND forehead0 to sell it further. Its a classic shot from Psycho. When William Macy did it in 1998 , with his full head of hair and thin face...the artistic effect just wasn't the same. Only Eddie G of the list above might have come CLOSE to delivering such a close-up for Hitchcock.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

I do like Hodiak as Sam, although his screen persona seemed to lean more in the direction of urban smoothie.

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Fair enough. I suppose Lifeboat was a change of pace -- he was a 'working man steamship crewman" with Socialist sympathies.

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Come to that, Gavin himself looked more like he belonged in a lawyer's office than a hardware store.

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And I found that that WORKED for Psycho -- especially when I saw Viggo Mortensen overplay the "hick" aspects and wear a flashy cowpoke's wardrobe. Hitchocck managed to get Gavin's Sam into a SUIT AND TIE for the fruit cellar climax(by sending him to church to visit the Chamberses first.) Anyway, though Gavin does other scenes in a white shirt(ala Perkins in the third act of Psycho and Grant in the third act of NXNW) and one in a windbreaker("Arbogast! Arbogast!")...he "suited up suave" in the HItchocck tradition and had the voice to match.

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How 'bout our Detour protagonist, Tom Neal?

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Give him another great role in another great highway noir!

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Young and physically robust enough to have been Marion's object of lust as well as Lila's last-minute save-the-day hero, he was also good at the beaten-down quality of a man with possibilities now mired in circumstances that had stalled his momentum.

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Sam's beaten down quality sure worked for the character, didn't it? Tall , muscular, handsome, a "stud" type - but somewhat a failure in life, not entirely his fault: a divorce, sleeping in the backroom of his hardware store, drowning in debt...I've always said that when Psycho is over, the characters have to go back to their "humdrum lives" (as the villainess in Singin in the Rain crowed over her fans.)

So..Tom Neal...good choice with "some real life movie connection" ala Detour (and Neal ended up in prison on some sort of homicide charge in real life, I think.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

My only reservation about Lane as Lowery is an inherently comic persona of the unsympathetic variety.

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Yeah, even as I named Lane, I thought of how rather "broad and forever" his heartless bureaucrat persona was -- over DECADES. Like the 30s into...the 60s..maybe the 70s?Too much for the role, lacking the sophistication Hitch needed. Oh, well, it started the conversation...

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In his place, I imagine Porter Hall (the train witness, Jackson, in Double Indemnity), who was physically not unlike Vaughn Taylor: slight; balding; mustached.

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Now we're talking! The first of TWO 40s character guys you have offered that I had to LOOK UP to draw a bead on their looks so I could remember who they were. Harry Shannon was the other.

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Nervous and concerned businessmen were among the many guises he could furnish as easily as pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.

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..and 1945/1946 casting directors would know him and he'd just had Double Indemnity as a hit.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

As Sheriff Chambers, I envision Harry Shannon,

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Had to look HIM up! Yep, I see it..

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who played more cops of varying types than you could shake a nightstick at:

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Ha

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straight-arrow, big-city smart cookies; corrupt rubber-hose-wielders; rural deputies; kindly, small-town beat-walkers; befuddled blusterers.

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great "word pictures"

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Shadow of a Doubt's Patricia Collinge would have fit well as Mrs. Chambers.

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Very nicely. I suppose that the small town Santa Rosa(a real town) characters in SOAD are forerunners of the small town Fairvale(a fictional town) in Psycho. I wonder if there is a 1946 role for Hume Cronyn in Psycho? Probably not -- though William H. Macy was a Hume Cronyn-type Arbogast in 1998. My head is spinning.

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But a passing thought: with the right makeup, hair and properly dowdy costuming, Lurene Tuttle might have pulled it off just as easily in '46 as she did 14 years later. In fact, now I think of it, so could John McIntire have done.

--

Ha! Yes for both! I checked imdb and it looks like John McIntire's first screen credit is Call Northside 777 in 1948 but he did a radio voice in The Hucksters of 1947 and I'll be he was already doing radio in 1946.
(He finished his career in 1989...Turner and Hooch with Tom Hanks. He gets murdered in that one! Poor old man--Hanks and the dog avenge him.)

Tuttle too goes back to 1947 on screen, but did a lot of radio.

So McIntire and Tuttle could have "debuted" in Psycho 1946 - and I suppose this shows what veterans both were when they came to Psycho in 1960. I always like Lurene Tuttle's one actual comment on her work in Psycho. it was the church scene: "Hitchcock wanted me to take fewer, quicker steps down the steps in front of the church. I told him I could only make womanly little steps!" So think of Tuttle's hard work getting that shot!

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

For Dr. Richman, any number of authoritative types would do (with the professorial, Viennese-accented stereotype to be avoided at all costs),

---

Yeah...like the actor who got one of those rare Hitchcock acting Oscar nominations ..for Spellbound!

Simon Oakland gave off the vibe of the man he was playing -- a county-employee(or contract consultant?) trained psychiatrist in an isolated rural county(really, Shasta County California, per Hitchcock.) In short, possibly less astute and deep in his training than say, an NYC shrink would be. But maybe not...very intelligent people gravitate to, or come from, rural areas.

---

but there was an endlessly versatile, prolific but unsung character actor of the era named Stanley Ridges. From rigid military officers to studious chemists, understanding judges or underworld hoods, lawyers sincere or sleazy, doctors of all types and temperaments (including psychiatrists), he unerringly filled the bill wherever he was cast, and could dominate or downplay as the scenes required.

---

HIM I knew. And if he were to downplay the psychiatrist scene it would be diffrent. Robert Forster downplayed the scene in the Van Sant but was foiled by -- yep -- too SHORT a version.

---

Who does that leave: Caroline? Maybe Jeff Donnell (she played Frank Lovejoy's wife in In a Lonely Place, and Tony Curtis's frumpy secretary in Sweet Smell of Success).

---

A good choice. Always liked her name.

--

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

But anyone who'd look just ordinary enough next to Lana Turner would do (leaving a wide field).

--

Ha. Well, Hitchcock so famously treated his daughter Pat as a "product" to be cast PROPERLY as the product she projected: dowdy, hardly glamourous . But perky. And she put up with it. I didn't check IMDb, but Pat said "she came out of retirement" as a wife and mother(three daughters) to do Psycho -- even more sacrificial work for a dowdy part. (Folks forget, however, that a younger Pat Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train actually flirted sucessfully with a cop who was attracted to her.)

--

As you say, that's the easy part.

---

Yes. A movie called "Psycho" could be cast in 1946 with the actors found to fit the characters. But the movie just could not be made CLOSE to what was done in 1960.

Indeed one thing that "brings back" just how disturbing Psycho was in my youth is that -- whether they are played by Janet Leigh and Martin Balsam or Anne Heche and William H. Macy -- Marion and Arbogast are perhaps most famous for being people who are killed more HORRIBLY than any characters in mainstream American film to that date. Its almost "the casting of cruelty" -- these interesting, pretty(Marion), wisecracking(Arbogast) intelligent, feeling people become ...prey. Meat to the slaughter. There would be a lot more like that later, bu they were the first.

---

If my thoughts on the rest jell, I'll chime in again.

---

Thank you! And just remember, if it doesn't jell it isn't...jello?(The lamebrained word change given to Macy's Arbogast.)

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

Some thoughts about the "character casts" in a few key Hitchcock films.

I think Telegonus wrote that Psycho has a rather small cast -- a cast of scores -- but its like they are all so isolated and vivid -- you remember them all. I mean, Janet Leigh acts ALONE with the highway cop, and then with California Charlie.

The grab bag of support in Psycho has some familiar faces -- John Anderson, Mort Mills, John McIntire -- but one film earlier, in the sweeping North by Northwest, I'd say Hitchcock came up with about 36 OTHER familiar faces -- you've got Les Treymane and Olan Soule in the auction scene, Ken Lynch as a Chicago cop, Ed Binns (one of the 12 Angry Men with Martin Balsam -- such a quidk part here) and Stanley ("The Trouble With Tribbles") Adams as Glen Cove cops, Tol Avery as a railroad cop, Ned Glass(soon to join Cary Grant in Charade) as a train ticket salesman, Philip Ober as Lester "Knife in the Back" Townsend...and on and on and on(only a few women alas -- Cary's mom and the fake Mrs. Townsend are rather a matched pair.)

And here come the "TV series" connections. 70s revival showings of Hitchocck movies always drew laughs when these actors appeared:

The Wrong Man: Werner Klemperer(Col Klink, Hogan's Heroes) as a shrink.
Vertigo: Raymond Bailey(Banker Drysdale, The Beverly Hillbillies) as a shrink.
North by Northwest: Edward Platt (The Chief, Get Smart) as Grant's lawyer(named Larrabee, who was a character on Get Smart - and Get Smart has spy roots IN NXNW.)
Psycho: Ted Knight(Ted Baxter, Mary Tyler Moore Show)

ALL of these guys got BIG LAUGHS when their scenes came up in their Hitchcock movies in 70's revival houses -- a bit harmful given how serious the scenes are in The Wrong Man, Vertigo and Psycho -- only in North by Northwest are the courtroom scene and the movie "comic" enough for "The Chief" to fit in(he is as exapserated by client Cary Grant as he was by Maxwell Smart -- the joke continues.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

The supporting cast in Psycho were all in such a strange and terrifying movie that I think they "stick" among all such casts -- each of these characters is a little bit scary "by association" (especially creepy Cassidy, the robotic cop and stern Charlie.)

One flim later in The Birds, matters are trivilized a little bit by the presence of comedy guys Richard Deacon(The Dick Van Dyke Show) and "Doodles" Weaver(that name)...the story is scary but not AS scary as Psycho, and these guys don't help. Still we get Malcolm Attebury(the farmer near the crop duster in NXNW) and Hitchocck all-star Doreen Lang as the Hysterial Mother in the Tides having played the Hysterical Bank Teller in The Wrong Man(and the merely put upon secretary to Cary Grant in NXNW.)

I'll leap to near the end on supporting casts:

Topaz had a lot of foreign locations(Copenhagen, Paris) and a lot of international actors who had worked with Bunuel, Godard, Truffaut, and Bergman -- but for scenes filmed at Universal studios, Hitchcock surrounded these "bona fide international actors" with familar TV actors like Ben Wright and John Van Dreelan.

After a run of "international films"(Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy in England), Hitchcock returned to America for Family Plot in 1976 and I recall being a little disappointed in how little known some of the support WAS.

I mean...Edward Kemmerling? Alan Fudge?(a Universal contract player at the time.) Whoever played the minister in the "Abe and Mabel's Cafe" scene? I guess Universal didn't give Hitchcock the budget(or maybe he didn't have the script) to attract 70's support like Ned Beatty or Charles Durning or Harold Gould. Hitch DID import three actors from the prison football movie The Longest Yard(which Hitchcock loved) --Ed Lauter(Maloney the henchman), the old cemetary worker and the tombstone maker -- THAT guy was a real familiar face in the 70s.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

Hitchcock DID cast a surprising support guy in Family Plot: Nicholas Colasanto, who was known as a TV director at the time(Columbo) and was pretty funny as the recently releaed kidnap victim millioinaire trying to debrief the cops. This billionaire went on to be the befuddled bartender "Coach" on Cheers..that's acting!

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) a month ago

This is a really cool thought experiment and I love all your casting choices, my favorite being Edward G Robinson as Arbogast!

In 1946, there's no way the shower murder would have survived the script phase. That blend of sex and murder had to be much less explicit-- think Robinson murdering his treacherous femme fatale lover with an ice pick (very phallic) in her bed in SCARLET STREET. Hell, I'm not even sure they would have allowed Norman to kill in drag or have that overt a "mother complex." The Breen Office might have filed that under general "sex perversion."

Norman's "mother issues" might have been largely internalized, with mise en scene suggesting the emotional incest of the relationship. Marion definitely would not get killed in the shower. Maybe the hotel bedroom on the bed ( like Ann Savage getting strangled on the bed-- albeit by accident-- in DETOUR or the case I mentioned with SCARLET STREET) in her PJs... but that's it. No suggested nudity at all, certainly. And definitely no mummified corpse in the fruit cellar! They would have snipped that out entirely, maybe only let Norman keep a lock of hair as a fetishistic (but not too macabre) token of his obsession.

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

This is a really cool thought experiment and I love all your casting choices, my favorite being Edward G Robinson as Arbogast!

---

Thanks. I sort of started with Eddie G and worked around him. Norman Bates is SO much Anthony Perkins that it was hard putting Robert Walker in there, but I DO hold to the idea that Hitchcock cast Robert Walker and Anthony Perkins as psycho villains for EXACTLY the same reason -- to contrast their "young nice guy" personas with evil characters, so he probably WOULD have cast Walker in 1946(Perkins wasn't in movies yet, too young.)

I think if you look at Robert Walker in his first scene on the train with Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train...so friendly at first but with a certain "in a dream" mood and sometimes suddenly angry (about his father)...you can "superimpose" the Walker performance onto the Norman Bates parlor scene with Marion.

But this: it occurs to me that Hitchcock dressed three of his four psychos up in suits and ties: Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie, Robert Walker as Bruno, and Barry Foster as Bob Rusk in Frenzy(though he has one leather sportcoat that's a bit creepy in its ostentatiousness.) Meanwhile, Anthony Perkins in Psycho NEVER wears a tie. He's a rural man in a service job, in three variations on the same outfit (white shirt and slacks): (1) With jacket; (2) with black sweater, (3) with shirt and slacks only. This became "the persona of Norman Bates" and picturing Robert Walker in those outfits takes some work.

Lana Turner really WAS up for Marion Crane in 1959 but evidently too old. So give her the part in 1946.

Etc.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

In 1946, there's no way the shower murder would have survived the script phase.

---

Well, there you go. I rather think so, too and so -- a Psycho WITHOUT a shower murder -- well, its just not Psycho at all, is it?

There is a clip that gets shown from time to time of some movie from the 40s -- a Val Lewton one? -- in which a woman showers and the shadow of someone forms through the curtain and it is a LOT like Mother through the curtain in Psycho -- except the person on the other side of the curtain is KNOWN to the shower lady and they talk with no danger in the scene at all. Still -- the effect WAS filmed in the 40s (just like the swinging light bulb effect WAS filmed in The Picture of Dorian Gray.)

----

That blend of sex and murder had to be much less explicit-- think Robinson murdering his treacherous femme fatale lover with an ice pick (very phallic) in her bed in SCARLET STREET.

--

I have not seen Scarlet Street, but truly there were a lot of murders filmed int he 40s and they simply had to "pull punches" all the time. No blood in stabbing scenes. Stranglings very quickly performed.

And yet: it was in 1947's gangster movie Kiss of Death that Richard Widmark pushed an old lady in a wheelchair down a staircase to her death(no Arbogast effects here -- a long shot of a dummy in a wheelchair sailing down the staircase.)
The very FACT that Widmark killed an old lady in a wheelchair on purpose made it violent. And famous -- perhaps the most famous violent murder in movies BEFORE the shower scene.

And I just flashed on what I felt was quite a violent murder in the horror movie "The Body Snatchers"(directed by Robert Wise!) Boris Karloff is facing Bela Lugosi in a room, each man sitting in a chair. Karloff makes the superfast decision to kill Lugosi with his bare hands, jumps over from his chair and the shot of Karloff strangling Lugosi as he lowered himto the floor was rather long and lingering as I recall(or I wouldn't have remembered it.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

I guess my point here is that from Scarlett Street to Kiss of Death to The Body Snatcher, a certain KIND of violent murder was allowed in the forties (and has no violence ALWAYS gotten more lenience with the censors than sex?) but the shower murder elements -- naked lady, big knife, killer in drag -- were just too much for that decade to even contemplate.

---Hell, I'm not even sure they would have allowed Norman to kill in drag or have that overt a "mother complex." The Breen Office might have filed that under general "sex perversion."

--
I always get lost on the "Hays Code" and "The Breen Office" and "The Hays-Breen Code." I usually pick "Hays Code" and be done with it. Ha.

But I've read selected pages of the code over the years and yes, in its most unforgiving years, the code used phrases like "sex perversion" to cover a multitude of forbidden subjects. That said, I think Lon Chaney dressed up like an old lady in The Old Dark House...but that was "pre-code."

And think of all the sexual things that directors like Wilder and Hitchcock SLIPPED by the Hays Code people in the forties. The lovers in Double Indemnity, Notorious, and Lifeboat seem pretty clearly having sex to me -- its just not shown, or discussed except in "code." "Homosexulaity" was forbidden by the code and yet Rope pretty clearly posits a male gay couple as the killers("Rope" was banned on military bases and in some cities, evidently because of this content.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

Norman's "mother issues" might have been largely internalized, with mise en scene suggesting the emotional incest of the relationship.

---

Yes, to the extent that I keep picturing a forties version of Psycho, it would be a film in which pretty much all DIRECT imagery or plot or action would fall away into a far more vague psychological study of a troubled young man.

---

Marion definitely would not get killed in the shower. Maybe the hotel bedroom on the bed ( like Ann Savage getting strangled on the bed-- albeit by accident-- in DETOUR or the case I mentioned with SCARLET STREET) in her PJs... but that's it.

---

In my years of musing on Psycho, I've mused on this one: what if Marion had NOT taken a pre-bedtime shower? (I'm talking about the 1960 version.) Well, Mother would still want to kill her, with that big knife, and in bed while sleeping would be the way but -- HOO BOY -- what a MESSY clean-up for Norman. No drain for the blood to spiral into. No slick walls or tub for the washing. A body to dispose of AND a mattress covered in blood. Yecch.
Mother sure was lucky that Marion wanted that shower first.

...and a 1946 Psycho maybe wouldn't have wanted to deal with that bloody mattress. Still, just a stab or two? Keep the blood on the body? Might work.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

No suggested nudity at all, certainly.

---

Nope, not allowed.

--

And definitely no mummified corpse in the fruit cellar! They would have snipped that out entirely, maybe only let Norman keep a lock of hair as a fetishistic (but not too macabre) token of his obsession.

--

That snip of hair is EXACTLY the kind of thing that 1946 "suggestive" filmmaking would allow...nothing more.

Unless they elected to go with James Cavenaugh's "giant doll with button eyes" version of mother...

---

Particularly with your suggested version of this 1946 versino of Psycho, ElizabethJoester, the thought experiment does seem to FAIL. Everything that made Psycho...Psycho...would have to be removed. And even if they could retain the magnificent arena of the Old House and the Shabby Motel...without truly shocking things happening in those two classic locales...the locales would be totally wasted.

Side-bar: I have a book of reviews by noted critic James Agee -- reviews largely from the 40s. It is interesting reading the man writing of movies like Shadow of a Doubt and Casablanca and The Best Years of Our Liveswith more of an "adult" viewpoint than those movies would seem to allow. Today, WE see those movies as from a restricted, censored era but Agee has to deal with them as they are.

And yet,in a few of his reviews from 1946 or such, Agee himself writes something like "Of course, this can't be said or shown because we remain in a bizarre moment in history when such candor cannot be expressed. I sincerely hope that we will leave this era soon."

I daresay in the 40s, there were plenty of books and paintings from the past with PLENTY of graphic sexual imagery and discussion. And profanity (though perhaps not at today's levels.) So a man like James Agee would READ those more sophisticated and frank books, and SEE those more frank paintings -- and be pained having to watch censored movies that represented the repression of The Church more than anything else.

CONT

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) a month ago

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

Particularly with your suggested version of this 1946 versino of Psycho, ElizabethJoester, the thought experiment does seem to FAIL. Everything that made Psycho...Psycho...would have to be removed.
--
Agreed. About the only distinctive thing they might have kept would be the "protagonist switch" following Marion's death.

---

Though much of the critical literature about Psycho focusses on the things like how Marion and her narrative simply get thrown out all of a sudden and Noman substituted in...at the end of the day I still think the sheer shocking horror violence(for its time, sure) of the two murders is what put Psycho on the map. The house and motel were their own kind of movie history as a matter of visuals, to be sure, but Psycho shocks BECAUSE Hitchocck let that shower murder go on and on and on(I wonder when he decided "enough stabs were enough?" and BECAUSE he let that second murder(which Hitchcock called "shorter but more terrifying than the first) play out in such nightmare brutality.

"1946 Psycho" could kill off Marion and then Arbogast off-screen and proceed with the same plot - a heroine dying at 47 minutes would still be a surprise, I suppose -- but , no violence, no Psycho. And it was not JUST violence. It was violence undertaken by a truly obscene and revolting monster - an old woman with shocking strength and sickening viciousness (that big KNIFE was history, too.)

Anyway, if one made some sort of Psycho where the murders happened offscreen, MAYBE that would have worked in 1946, but we'd be left without history.

CONT
--

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

I have a book of reviews by noted critic James Agee -- reviews largely from the 40s. It is interesting reading the man writing of movies like Shadow of a Doubt and Casablanca and The Best Years of Our Liveswith more of an "adult" viewpoint than those movies would seem to allow.
--
Well, those films do have adult themes in them. I find a lot of Code-era films of the late 30s and 40s were not necessarily just shallow nonsense or without depth because they couldn't be explicit.

---

I agree strongly with that. I don't watch as many 30s and 40s films as I should, but when I DO, they clearly have intelligent writing and complex characters. Its just that -- compared to what can be said and shown today -- these are movies that simply pull their punches.

Certainly a movie does not HAVE to have nudity, or cussing, or gory violence "to work," but perhaps other items were what were REALLY censored in (post-code) 30s, 40s, and 50s films. Homosexuality for instance. Forbidden even to be spoken of. (And yet Hitchcock slipped it into Rebecca, Rope, Strangers on a Train and NXNW.)

---

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

However, it is true they were limited in how far they could push their explorations or they had to be super sneaky in getting darker/controversial material across (ex. the incest subtext in SHADOW OF A DOUBT).

---

Yes. Boy, the incest subtext in Shadow of a Doubt is rather "hidden in plain sight," isn't it? BOTH Uncle Charlie's sister , and her DAUGHTER, have strong feelings for the man, and the daughter is proud to walk down her main street on Uncle Charlie's arm showing him off to her teenage girfriends as if he is her BOYFRIEND(if not lover.)

Playwright/screenwriter David Mamet claims SOAD as his favorite film and pointed out that its hidden theme was the sexually abusive nature of UNCLE CHARLIE towards the mother and her daughter. When it seemed to me that the plot had it "the other way around." Uncle Charlie may have leveraged the love of his womenfolk, but he didn't strike me as sexually untowards them.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

On some other thread or page -- I think about Doc Holliday as a "foolproof" Western character from the 40s(Victor Mature) to the 90s at least (Val Kimer and Dennis Quaid) -- I spoke to how the gunbattle at the end of John Ford's 1946 "My Darling Clementine" and its "Gunfight at the OK corral" wasn't just the most historically inaccurate one, but constrained by the less violent gunplay of 1946 (no blood spurts for one thing, less gunshots for another.)

I was rebuked by another poster who seemed to feel that NOTHING about 1946 made a movie from such a year as lesser than later years.

Oh, in importance and acting, etc, I suppose -- but the truth is, in all the decades since the forties, we in the audience have been conditioned to accept more "action packed" gunbattle scenes -- from The Wild Bunch(with the MOST blood) on through Scarface and Die Hard, etc.

One reason I liked the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven is that, since the pretty exciting final gunbattle in the 1960 original, we had had The Wild Bunch and every kind of shoot 'em up imaginable, so in 2016, the final battle of the 7(and the townspeople) against a small army was, simply...more exciting that the 1960 original on general TECHNICAL principles(even though the original killed off some of the 7 with more HEART.) The new gunbattle had explosives and a gatling gun too -- that's Wild Bunch territory without the blood.

CONT

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) a month ago

[–] roger1 (2394) a month ago

And yet,in a few of his reviews from 1946 or such, Agee himself writes something like "Of course, this can't be said or shown because we remain in a bizarre moment in history when such candor cannot be expressed. I sincerely hope that we will leave this era soon."
--
That's interesting!
--
Yes..though I'd better note that my rather precise statement was PARAPHRASED from Mr. Agee -- its not EXACTLY waht the said, but it is surely the gist. The idea being that it was weird for people to see those censored movies when other art forms were more frank -- not to mention REAL LIFE was more frank (I mean people were having sex in that day.)

--I daresay in the 40s, there were plenty of books and paintings from the past with PLENTY of graphic sexual imagery and discussion. And profanity (though perhaps not at today's levels.) So a man like James Agee would READ those more sophisticated and frank books, and SEE those more frank paintings -- and be pained having to watch censored movies that represented the repression of The Church more than anything else.
--
Yes. Theater in particular could be much franker. Just look at the work of Eugene O'Neill or Tennessee Williams

---

..and I suppose that I can/should come in ON THE SIDE of the movie censorship on perhaps one particular basis: books with graphic sex scenes or language were ONLY TO BE READ, and the graphic scenes were left to the imagination of the reader. Putting such scenes ON A MOVIE SCREEN was to risk making such fantasies too literall and too widely seen(as opposed to read.)

With regard to theater, its a "numbers game." In the 40s and 50s, most plays were seen on Broadway -- by very few people overall in the US (even including "road show versions" sent to cities acroess the country.) But, again, movies were a MASS medium...the censors understood that.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2394) 25 days ago

Movie history ran its course. With the R and X ratings arriving in 1968, the 70's sort of "let it all hang out" (with SOME movies, hardly all -- Airport, Love Story and The Sting were pretty mild) and then everything sort of "backed off" and family audiences were favored.

Consider, for instance, most of the films of Steven Spielberg. Practically no sex, a certain amount of PG violence(Jaws, Indiana Jones) and then full-tilt "prestige blood and gore" in Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report. But overall -- Spielberg makes movies that COULD have been released in the 40s and 50s. Maybe that's why he succeeded for so long.

That said -- and edging on topic -- Psycho II , with a couple of REALLY gory Kills -- opened in the mild 80s the same summer as Return of the Jedi and Spielberg's failed "Twilight Zone" movie (ah, 1983 - bring back Psycho and The Twilight Zone for 60's nostalgia buffs.)

And edging further BACK on topic -- "a 1946 Psycho" -- no THAT couldn't be made, nor could a 1956 Psycho. (Sidebar: how come QT hates 50's movies but seems to spare 40s movies -- they were equally censored -- maybe because the 40s had all those postwar noirs and the 50s were filled with wide screen Techicolor musicals and epics?

Perhaps a pre-code 1930 Psycho could have been made. Its hard to picture it being done well -- though I guess Potemkin's steps scene was in film history to show how a shower murder COULD be shot and cut.

Still...1946 Psycho? No. Naw. Nope. Psycho arrived as public sentiment and censors were ready for it -- however reluctantly. 1960.